Why Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Giovanni Caforio is buying Celgene, in his own words

With its announcement on Thursday that it will acquire biotech bellwether Celgene, Bristol-Myers Squibb has placed a very big bet: that it is worth $74 billion to combine its cancer drugs with Celgene’s.

“We’ve taken our strategic foundation to be the best of biotech and the best of pharma as a company,” Bristol Chairman and Chief Executive Giovanni Caforio told me.

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“When one looks broadly at cancer immunotherapy, there are four big areas, he argued: drugs like Opdivo and Keytruda; medicines like Bristol’s Yervoy; medicines that make use of a protein called IL-2, such as one Bristol licensed from Nektar; and cell therapies such as the ones it just acquired in its Celgene buy.”

That strikes me as an exceedingly arbitrary categorization of IO therapies – salesmanship around the combined BMY / CELG asset base reinforces the notion that this deal is the result of a push for growth at any cost.